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This week's episode was recorded LIVE at Resident in downtown LA, as a part of The Voyager Institute's lecture series. So you may hear some noises in the background that you're not normally accustomed to - audience members laughing, drinks being made, and people having the best night of their lives! We have on the program the co-creator of Lifetime's 'UnREAL', Sarah Gertrude Shapiro. She's on to talk about the beloved, 90's, goth-inspiring masterpiece, The Craft. April and Sarah discuss their love for the campiness of the film and the perfect casting of Fairuza Balk as the evil teenage witch, Nancy. Sarah also elaborates on what it is like running a TV show. She dives into the challenges of directing an episode while also needing to be in the writing room. Plus, she details her journey from working on 'The Bachelor', to ending up in advertising in Portland, to creating her own TV show. Show notes

Ricky Jay on the mystery of Matthias Buchinger, calligraphy and practicing magic with an injured hand.

Ricky Jay is a man with a particular set of skills. He is a magician, a master of sleight-of-hand, a historian, a writer, an actor and a collector of the odd and the unusual. He is also easily recognized for his performances in television and movies, including the films Magnolia, Boogie Nights and The Prestige.

Jay is also an avid collector of rare books and manuscripts often associated with magic, gambling, fraud, confidence games and unusual entertainers. His passion for unusual performers led him to write his latest book on a peculiar 18th century German man, Matthias Buchinger, who despite being born with no hands and legs, was an extremely skilled performer and calligrapher.

Now, Jay sits down with Jesse to talk about his discovery of Matthias Buchinger, his own theories about Buchinger's life and works, and why suffering an injury to his hand led him to an even greater appreciation of Buchinger's skill.

Brandie Posey, co-host of Maximum Fun's podcast Lady to Lady, recently released her debut stand-up album, Opinion Cave. In this excerpt, she talks about the weird place millenials occupy in our culture (and how it feels to be one).

Posey's album is available now via Bandcamp.

Segment begins at 32’20”

Photo: Rose Callahan

G. Bruce Boyer on the difference between fashion and style, why he hates uniforms and the most essential menswear item

G. Bruce Boyer has made the art of style his life’s work, but you shouldn't assume he's a fashionista. Instead, he's spent decades exploring and writing about what it takes to develop a sensibility around menswear.

A former fashion editor for GQ and Esquire, he has also authored, co-authored and contributed to several books on fashion including Elegance - A Guide to Quality in Menswear and Rebel Style: Cinematic Heroes of the 1950s. His latest book is entitled, True Style: The History and Principles of of Classic Menswear.

Boyer sat down with us to talk about the difference between fashion and style, why he's excited by the downfall of uniform dressing and the best piece to begin a men's wardrobe.

Segment begins at 36’30”

Photo: Liam Daniel

The Outshot: Attack the Block

Jesse gets past his aversion for “horror” and takes on the British sci-fi film Attack the Block, starring a pre-Star Wars John Boyega.

Is there such a thing as honest deception? Ricky Jay thinks so. Jay is one of the finest practioners of magic and sleight of hand in the world, and began performing as a child in Brooklyn. He learned the elements of performance from his grandfather, who was also a magician, and from his mentors like Dai Vernon and Charlier Miller.

He talks to us about magic as the family business, the times his work has made people angry, and why deception isn't always evil.

Star Trek: The Original Series broke ground with its debut in 1966. The show had a multiethnic cast, and creator Gene Roddenberry tackled social issues in a futuristic setting. George Takei was an original castmember, and helped paved the way for Asian-American actors on television with his character Hikaru Sulu.

Takei went on to reprise his role in the animated Star Trek series and six Star Trek movies. He's also accumulated dozens of other acting and voiceover credits, from the 1956 Japanese monster movie Rodan, to The Simpsons, to Heroes.

But the new documentary To Be Takei goes beyond his acting career to show Takei's remarkable backstory and his positivity in the face of adversity. Before he even began kindergarten, he and his family were ordered at gunpoint to a U.S. internment camp for Japanese-Americans. In puberty, he realized that his emerging crushes were on boys, not girls. Takei chose to remain closeted for decades, to shelter his acting career from any fallout over his sexuality.

Takei spoke to us about his family's struggle to retain normalcy during and after their imprisonment in an American internment camp, starring in the Twilight Zone episode that America couldn't handle, and the impact that being gay has had on his personal and professional life. (Yes, there's a Star Trek question in there too.)

What happens when a hardcore band makes a rock opera, or quadruple tracks their drums, or writes a beautiful love song? Damian Abraham's band, ****ed Up, has done all of that and more. They started back in 2001, and have only gotten more ambitious over time.

Abraham, also known as Father Damian or Pink Eyes, got his first taste of punk rock as a fourteen-year-old, when the lead singer of the band he was seeing jumped off stage and tackled him and his friends. Abraham loved that punk wasn't "music by observation", it was "music by participation".

He talks to us about what it's like to have punk rock be your life and career, the circumstances that spurred his decision to drop his straightedge lifestyle, and the aesthetics of his music.

****ed Up's newest album is Glass Boys. The band will wrap up a string of U.S. tourdates shortly, and will tour Canada in September.

The College Years is a look deep into the vaults of The Sound of Young America. Take a journey with us every week as we post a new program from our salad days.

Today's theme: Literary Magic

Jesse talks to Amy Krouse Rosenthal, a writer of numerous books for children including Little Pea, Spoon, The Wonder Book, Cookies: Bite-Size Life Lessons, and Duck! Rabbit! And while those titles can be enjoyed by kid and adult alike, she writes literature geared towards grown-ups as well, including her best-selling memoir,Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, which she discusses on the show. She is the host and creator of NPR's MissionAmyKR.com, produced by Chicago Public Radio.

Then Jesse talks to Ricky Jay, who made his name as one of the world’s great sleight-of-hand artists, and has various accomplishments as an author, actor and historian. They discuss how his pursuit of these numerous accomplishments grew from his passion for magic, juggling and other unusual performances.